Modules as Mission Rewards

[M00ka]

This is a follow-on to a comment I made in another thread on DD but the idea has been floating around in my mind for a while now.

Who would like to receive a full engineered module instead of a bunch of credits for a specific mission. Mainly talking about those 'Tip Off' missions here, the ones you get via the messaging system when you really don't want them and they are currently no worth doing anyway with the current rewards. But what if the mysterious mission giver rewarded you in a different way, like transferring a 5A FSD already engineered to G5 Increased Range with the experimental Mass Manager applied. Now before the pitchforks come out, not asking for some unique or hybrid module that can't be obtained by normal gameplay, just ones that are expensive, already fully engineered with the appropriate experimental applied. Of course once you get it you can choose to either use it as is, sell it, change the modification/experimental on it (at your cost), the choice is yours.

Ideally you will be told what the module and engineering is prior to accepting the mission, so again the choice is solely yours if you wish to continue or not (you might not want nor need a 5A FSD and the credits for selling it aren't worth your time). And if FD were smart, this reward option would only be available on these mysterious Tip Off missions, not as a regular mission reward via the Mission Board.

So your thoughts, good idea of bad?

 

[RamirezKurita]

Could be extremely hard to balance, considering how even wing missions only give a few of the top-end materials at a time and you need a whole bunch of them to fully G5 a module. Either the tipoff missions would have to be drastically increased in length/difficulty/complexity, or they would have to be limited to handing out only middling grades of engineering.

They would also bring in the important question: who is the mysterious creator of all of these newly engineered modules? Do they support this 3rd party palming off their hard work in return for favours?

 

[M00ka]

Could be extremely hard to balance, considering how even wing missions only give a few of the top-end materials at a time and you need a whole bunch of them to fully G5 a module. Either the tipoff missions would have to be drastically increased in length/difficulty/complexity, or they would have to be limited to handing out only middling grades of engineering.

They would also bring in the important question: who is the mysterious creator of all of these newly engineered modules? Do they support this 3rd party palming off their hard work in return for favours?

Lets see, a 5A FSD is around the 5,000,000 credit mark to buy so even with engineering lets cost it at around 7,500,000 credits. Credit wise that is a lowish reward for a top level mission. As for the wing factor, wouldn't come into it, I have only been talking about Tip Off missions and far as I know they are purely one Commander missions.

As for who provides these modules, well the NPC mission provider of course. Think about it, NPCs sell us the modules anyway, NPC's provide the engineering of said modules, who is to say that some of them don't have the odd module laying around that could be used for payment. Never said they were new modules, just engineered modules, remember - heck can you say with certainty that any of the modules and ships you have purchased are brand new?

Look it seems that the community here wasn't take by my idea, fair enough it was only something that popped into my head and I thought it would be a nice change for a specific mission type - no harm done.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Lets see, a 5A FSD is around the 5,000,000 credit mark to buy so even with engineering lets cost it at around 7,500,000 credits. Credit wise that is a lowish reward for a top level mission. As for the wing factor, wouldn't come into it, I have only been talking about Tip Off missions and far as I know they are purely one Commander missions.

As for who provides these modules, well the NPC mission provider of course. Think about it, NPCs sell us the modules anyway, NPC's provide the engineering of said modules, who is to say that some of them don't have the odd module laying around that could be used for payment. Never said they were new modules, just engineered modules, remember - heck can you say with certainty that any of the modules and ships you have purchased are brand new?

Look it seems that the community here wasn't take by my idea, fair enough it was only something that popped into my head and I thought it would be a nice change for a specific mission type - no harm done.

The wing mission comparison is because they are one of the few ways of reliably getting top-tier engineering materials from missions. Faced with the choice between doing a single tip-off mission or running multiple 1000+ tonne cargo missions to achieve the same end result, it's quite obvious that the traditional option is by far the less effective one in terms of rewards vs investment. They would have to either be as involved as running multiple wing missions or would have to give pretty lousy engineered rewards to be balanced against the existing missions.

NPCs sell us stock modules, but remember that there's very few people out there in the galaxy with the intellect and knowledge to push modules beyond what the manufacturers themselves know how to do; engineering isn't something an average mechanic at a station is capable of. Getting an engineered A-rated module is like getting gifted a Bugatti Chiron that has then been hand-tuned by the Mercedes Formula 1 Team. Also, if I were to be performing the best modifications in the galaxy as a personal favour for a friend, I wouldn't be too happy if said "friend" then used my work as a bargaining chip to get some shady work done at their own gain.

It could be quite interesting if the engineers themselves gave us some of these tip-offs though, possibly in exchange for free G5 engineering rolls at their bases rather than full modules (which would encourage us to visit our friends properly once in a while!). Each engineer could have their own set of likely missions they would offer depending on what they do, with Selene Jean asking the player to check out mineral-rich USSs for rare minerals or the Dweller asking the player to take down some wings of system security to help destabilise a region. That's less of the tip-off system though, and more of an entirely new set of missions the player gets offered I guess.

 

[Factabulous]

Unless the mission allowed you to specify the module and engineering then the chance of getting one you wanted would be astronomically low. The "grind" complaints would be huge. Or people would play the game by sitting for hours watching mission boards refresh (which some seem to do anyway for massacre stacking)

If you can't choose the engineering then the complaints about module storage would be huge, they're pretty hard now. And some people love to packrat.

Maybe it could work for special modules like powerplay ones, or even letting people get modules like the CG ones, but RNG on the rewards appearing would give me flashbacks to playing Diablo

 

[M00ka]

The wing mission comparison is because they are one of the few ways of reliably getting top-tier engineering materials from missions. Faced with the choice between doing a single tip-off mission or running multiple 1000+ tonne cargo missions to achieve the same end result, it's quite obvious that the traditional option is by far the less effective one in terms of rewards vs investment. They would have to either be as involved as running multiple wing missions or would have to give pretty lousy engineered rewards to be balanced against the existing missions.

NPCs sell us stock modules, but remember that there's very few people out there in the galaxy with the intellect and knowledge to push modules beyond what the manufacturers themselves know how to do; engineering isn't something an average mechanic at a station is capable of. Getting an engineered A-rated module is like getting gifted a Bugatti Chiron that has then been hand-tuned by the Mercedes Formula 1 Team. Also, if I were to be performing the best modifications in the galaxy as a personal favour for a friend, I wouldn't be too happy if said "friend" then used my work as a bargaining chip to get some shady work done at their own gain.

It could be quite interesting if the engineers themselves gave us some of these tip-offs though, possibly in exchange for free G5 engineering rolls at their bases rather than full modules (which would encourage us to visit our friends properly once in a while!). Each engineer could have their own set of likely missions they would offer depending on what they do, with Selene Jean asking the player to check out mineral-rich USSs for rare minerals or the Dweller asking the player to take down some wings of system security to help destabilise a region. That's less of the tip-off system though, and more of an entirely new set of missions the player gets offered I guess.

You seem to be under the misguided impression that these so called engineers are some mystical group that perform tasks only they, the individual, can do. Nothing could be further from the truth, they are damn charlatans, scam artists of the highest order - and really dumb, nay I say it, idiotic, scam artists at that. Firstly you turn up, jump through some meaningless hoops to get their attention, then they modify your modules for the high price of TRASH. Yep, you just paid for that Power Plant to be overcharged with trash you have picked up in your travels. They are that dumb they won't even take credits, nope, a lump of unprocessed Sulphur, some old wiring from a heat conductor you picked up form a ship you BLEW UP and a conductive component you picked up that was laying around Dav's Hope. Such quality goods to nearly double the output of Power Plant - yeah what a great business plan.

And to make things even more stupider, these Sultans of The Spanner, Wizards of the Wiring Diagram let you fly away with the detailed blue prints of what they just did. And with those blueprints, any spanner monkey on every station that has a sign saying 'Remote Engineering Here' can duplicate exactly what this mystical engineer has done. The only secrets they maintain is the experiementals and I think that is simply because they don't know how they did the experiment in the first place!

Honestly I can't work out how these Engineers actually manage to exist day to day, no income to speak off apart from the occassional hand out they get when you need to introduce yourself to them, but after that - nada. Hmm maybe they have a Trash market on the side ....

 

[RamirezKurita]

You seem to be under the misguided impression that these so called engineers are some mystical group that perform tasks only they, the individual, can do. Nothing could be further from the truth, they are damn charlatans, scam artists of the highest order - and really dumb, nay I say it, idiotic, scam artists at that. Firstly you turn up, jump through some meaningless hoops to get their attention, then they modify your modules for the high price of TRASH. Yep, you just paid for that Power Plant to be overcharged with trash you have picked up in your travels. They are that dumb they won't even take credits, nope, a lump of unprocessed Sulphur, some old wiring from a heat conductor you picked up form a ship you BLEW UP and a conductive component you picked up that was laying around Dav's Hope. Such quality goods to nearly double the output of Power Plant - yeah what a great business plan.

And to make things even more stupider, these Sultans of The Spanner, Wizards of the Wiring Diagram let you fly away with the detailed blue prints of what they just did. And with those blueprints, any spanner monkey on every station that has a sign saying 'Remote Engineering Here' can duplicate exactly what this mystical engineer has done. The only secrets they maintain is the experiementals and I think that is simply because they don't know how they did the experiment in the first place!

Honestly I can't work out how these Engineers actually manage to exist day to day, no income to speak off apart from the occassional hand out they get when you need to introduce yourself to them, but after that - nada. Hmm maybe they have a Trash market on the side ....

When you are that good at a job, you can basically name your price. The engineers are all either so fabulously rich that no amount of money we could offer would make any difference to them, they are deep in the pockets of superpowers/powers or they are simply so detached from society that they have no use for credits. They are happy to receive random odds and ends in exchange for their work as they are doing it mostly as a favour to a friend and the goods they want are more just token gifts and souvenirs to help them in their research. Some of them evidently do a few bits of work here and there for the neutral factions for their spec ops and captains, and you could easily imagine how much someone would be willing to pay for their work (hint: if we couldn't get engineers to do this stuff as a favour, most people would probably be willing to spend literally billions on a single module for the extra performance that engineering offers).

Remote workshops are just that - remote. It isn't you handing the blueprint off to some dude on the station to modify your stuff, it's you placing your module in a fully automated workshop that the engineer and their team connect to in order to do their work. Full CNC kit, high temperature furnaces, 3d printers, robotic arms, electronic interface suites, they have everything someone would need to modify equipment and all accessible and controllable from a remote location. It's basically the sci-fi equivalent of letting someone remote desktop into your computer so they can use your printer.

 

[M00ka]

When you are that good at a job, you can basically name your price. The engineers are all either so fabulously rich that no amount of money we could offer would make any difference to them, they are deep in the pockets of superpowers/powers or they are simply so detached from society that they have no use for credits. They are happy to receive random odds and ends in exchange for their work as they are doing it mostly as a favour to a friend and the goods they want are more just token gifts and souvenirs to help them in their research. Some of them evidently do a few bits of work here and there for the neutral factions for their spec ops and captains, and you could easily imagine how much someone would be willing to pay for their work (hint: if we couldn't get engineers to do this stuff as a favour, most people would probably be willing to spend literally billions on a single module for the extra performance that engineering offers).

Remote workshops are just that - remote. It isn't you handing the blueprint off to some dude on the station to modify your stuff, it's you placing your module in a fully automated workshop that the engineer and their team connect to in order to do their work. Full CNC kit, high temperature furnaces, 3d printers, robotic arms, electronic interface suites, they have everything someone would need to modify equipment and all accessible and controllable from a remote location. It's basically the sci-fi equivalent of letting someone remote desktop into your computer so they can use your printer.

Okay I will concede that maybe these engineers are so fabulously wealthy that credits are totally meaningless to them now. Might explain how they can afford such massive bases I suppose. But if they are that wealthy, why can't they provide decent security around their station, they must lose so many new customers to WARRIORS IN BIG SHIPS who TEACH NEW PLAYERS 'THINGS'. And if you think the Engineers are doing all this work because they are your friend - think again. Like any trademan you are there bestest friend in the entire galaxy right up to you pay - then you are forgotten until you need them again!

So if these remote workshops are CNC machines, why the heck can't they do the experiementals? Why do we still need to pay with the same trash now that we know it isn't needed for the upgrade. How do we know, well the recent reduction in mats required proved that. Even though they were getting less 'goods' these Engineers still magically managed to perform the same upgrades, which totally proves that the trash we give them as absolutely nothing to do with the actual upgrade!

(Yes I am enjoying this, thank you for taking my ramblings in the right mood )